Sunday, February 02, 2014

Koel

Koels are evil birds. They wake at daylight and for hours make a hideous and repetitive call. Destroy Will Robinson, destroy. (That may be a misquote)

Koels disturbed our peace at the Blue Wren Motel in Mallacoota. I moaned about the noise here when we were on our road trip last year.

Now I hear that they are in Castlemaine. Why didn't any of your climate change warners mention about koels coming south as the country warms?

A little further research and to my surprise they have recently been heard on the outskirts of Melbourne, at Ivanhoe. You may think the sound is not so bad, but when it goes for hours, it is awful.

Form birdsinbackyards.net/

Distribution:

Most
Koels migrate from Australia to New Guinea and probably eastern
Indonesia and even further north, but some remain in northern Australia.
During breeding season, they are found in northern and eastern
Australia, south to about Nowra, New South Wales, although occasional
birds are encountered further south.

Habitat:

Common Koels are found in tall forests and are common in suburban areas.

Seasonal movements:

In
late September and early October each year, Common Koels arrive in
Australia from their northern winter homes to breed. The Koels leave
southern Australia in about March.

Might have known it, immigrants and they just so should not be this far south.

13 comments:

Some people tell me that what I thought were crows around our house are actually ravens. Having consulted the University of YouTube I suspect they really are crows, but whatever they are, they have departed.We now have a family of magpies that we feed on a little spot of lawn we can watch through the lounge rooms window. They come when TO goes outside with scraps and makes a call that sounds to me like it would be the gobble of a turkey. [Her french accent is even worse than her magpie accent].

If the rotten koels make it to Frankston, I hope the magpies win [a phrase I never thought I would utter].

But I can imagine how irritating the sound of a koel might be if it is relentless and as monotonous as the call in your clip above.

FC, University of the Highrise will tell you we don't have crows at all in Victoria. They are all ravens. Magpies are nice to feed, and hopefully remember who feeds them and not to swoop the bearer of gifts. I could bear the magpies winning if it meant no koels.

A bit like SA's piping shrike, I suppose. It always looked like a magpie to me.I shall try to catch a magpie's eye colour but it might be a challenge - they have eyes in the back of their head, they do :)

I don't mind the koels at all. I think you must be right about the function of the call, because there was lots of calling when they first turned up but unless they've all gone south to Melbourne they're not on the night sound track any more. Your you-tube clip is of the male; the female has another call (repeated shorter notes). As I mentioned last year, a pair became trapped in our fig tree last year so I had a chance to see them closer up.

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